It was nothing personal.
She knew that the two men in the car behind her, driving far too close and grinning foolishly beyond the tinted windscreen, could have chosen any woman to bully.
She had been driving out of the West End, crossing the Marylebone Road and starting to pick up speed on Albany Street, the long stretch of straight road that skirts Regent’s Park, and their big black four-by-four was suddenly there, filling her rear-view mirror, its diesel engine roaring and so close it was as if they wanted to drive straight through her.
And although it was nothing personal, their behaviour did not feel completely random. They wanted to teach her a lesson.
They wanted to show her. They wanted to show her good.
It was nothing personal, but there was a reason why they were driving that close. She had done something to push their touchy little buttons.
It could have been the car she was driving – the latest 7-series BMW, so new it still had that glorious showroom smell and sheen. And that would have been almost funny because it was not even her car – her battered little Fiat was in the garage, unable to squeeze past its MOT – but of course they did not know that.
And perhaps it wasn’t the car. Perhaps she had pulled away too fast at the lights, anxious to be home, the hour late now, their insecure manhoods shrinking as she left them dawdling in exhaust fumes.
Or perhaps they had been offended by the jokey sign in her rear window, black words on a yellow background. Baby, I’m Bored, it said, a single girl’s play on those Baby on Board signs you saw everywhere.
Not my sign, she thought. And not my life.
Or perhaps it was nothing to do with the brand-new car or the Baby, I’m Bored sign or the way she was driving. Perhaps they were just a pair of macho assholes. That was always a possibility.
As she skirted Regent’s Park, all the beautiful Nash buildings to her right, like castles made of ice cream glowing in the night-time, and the park itself a sea of unbroken blackness to her left, the two vehicles were suddenly alone on that lonely stretch of road.
All that darkness to the left, all that moneyed elegance to the right.
And the car behind so close that if she braked it felt like they would crash into her.
And now she was scared.
Her foot gently brushed the brakes. Barely enough to slow her borrowed vehicle but enough to make its brake lights blaze red.
The driver behind slammed on his own brakes, rubber shrieking, and his face tightened with fury as their vehicle receded.
She put her foot down. She really needed to be home. She ached for home now.
She was watching them in the rear-view mirror, watching their car get smaller, watching them far too closely, because she almost missed the sharp left turn in the road, she almost kept going, which would have been very bad indeed, but at the last moment she looked forward and cursed and tugged down hard on the left side of the steering wheel.
She took a breath, held it, speeding past London Zoo, accelerating for the junction where she would turn right into St John’s Wood and the road for home. She exhaled with relief, seeing the light was green.
‘Imagine life is a highway and all the lights are green,’ her father had once told her, and she smiled at the thought of him.
She turned right on her green light.
And they followed.
‘Oh, what’s your problem?’ she muttered, already knowing the answer.
She was their problem.
St John’s Wood now, the huge houses behind iron gates, and the streets empty.
And the black car filling her rear-view mirror.
The car edged closer, so close it must surely touch, so close she had stopped breathing.
And then suddenly they came to the big junction at Swiss Cottage and it was over.
They roared past her, and she glimpsed their faces as they tore away, not even looking at her, their simple minds bored with their vicious little game.
She exhaled. And she glanced over her shoulder to look at her six-month-old boy in the rearward-facing baby seat, feeling overwhelmed with relief and love.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, though she knew he was sleeping.
Cars were the one guarantee of getting him to nod off.
And then there were the big roads that led to the small roads home.
The Finchley Road was clogged with traffic even at this time of night, but still no sign of the black car, and she turned right at the old church, up Frognal Lane, climbing all the while, heading for the rooftop of the city.
Now the big houses of Hampstead were on either side, and she was still climbing. She slowly turned on to a tree-lined back road that looked as though it were in the heart of the country.
There was a private security guard in his van across the street. He glanced up at her without expression as she turned on to the private road that led to her home.
And the way home was blocked by the big black car.
They were waiting for her.
She slowed and stopped, reaching for her phone, because this was so wrong, and it was against the law, and then it all happened very quickly.
The two men were out of the car, their faces covered with some kind of mask, those masks that look like skulls, designed to halt the heart with a stab of fear, and they were walking quickly towards her car.
As if it was all planned. All of it.
She fumbled with the central locking but her doors opened on both sides, and someone’s hands were on her, gripping her by the arms just above the elbow, and the one who was on the passenger side walked round, his skull mask grinning in her headlights, to help drag her from the car.
She was screaming for help.
They lifted her from the ground as if she weighed nothing, the one holding her arms not changing his grip and the other one lifting her by the ankles. They carried her towards their car and she screamed and screamed and screamed.
And then the security guard was standing there.
One of the men said one word.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
And the security guard didn’t. He stood there, a boy in the presence of two men – unmanned, paralysed, just watching as they loaded her into their car.
And now she felt the violence in them. Not spite, or sadism, or wounded, woman-hating pride. But violence. Violence in the hands of deeply experienced professionals who did this sort of thing for a living.
She saw her baby son, and she called his name, and the child was still sleeping on the back seat, wet-lipped and head lolling under the Baby, I’m Bored sign, and she let out a howl like a wounded animal because she knew with total blinding clarity that she would never see him again in this life.
And that was when she understood.
This was personal.
This was as personal as hell.